None of this is to say that we shouldn’t be working on nuclear threat, of course. There are good arguments for why this is a big problem that have nothing to do with probability and subjective credences.
Can you give some examples? I expect that someone could respond “That could be too unlikely to matter enough” to each of them, since we won’t have good enough data.
Sure—Nukes exist. They’ve been deployed before, and we know they have incredible destructive power. We know that many countries have them, and have threatened to use them. We know the protocols are in place for their use.
To me this seems like you’re making a rough model with a bunch of assumptions like that past use, threats and protocols increase the risks, but not saying by how much or putting confidences or estimates on anything (even ranges). Why not think the risks are too low to matter despite past use, threats and protocols?
Can you give some examples? I expect that someone could respond “That could be too unlikely to matter enough” to each of them, since we won’t have good enough data.
Sure—Nukes exist. They’ve been deployed before, and we know they have incredible destructive power. We know that many countries have them, and have threatened to use them. We know the protocols are in place for their use.
To me this seems like you’re making a rough model with a bunch of assumptions like that past use, threats and protocols increase the risks, but not saying by how much or putting confidences or estimates on anything (even ranges). Why not think the risks are too low to matter despite past use, threats and protocols?